System and method for providing a social customer care system

ABSTRACT

The present invention relates to social customer service and support systems integrated with social media and social networks. More particularly, the invention provides a social customer care platform system to allow customer care functions, and in particular to allow customer service agents to identify, prioritize, match and triage customer support requests that may arise through a social network and may be serviced using a social network. It manages and tracks a high-volume of customer interactions and provides for monitoring of Internet social network posts relevant to a business&#39;s products or services along with the ability to capture, monitor, filter, make sense of and respond to, in near real-time, tens of thousands of social interactions. It comprises role specific user-interface and functionality for social customer service and support environments, automated prioritization and matching for increased agent productivity, and an automated enterprise workflow to align social media support with existing business processes.

BACKGROUND

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems for customer care areused to manage businesses' interactions their customers. CRM softwaresystems are designed to help reduce costs and increases profitability bysolidifying customer loyalty. Effective CRM systems bring togetherinformation from all data sources within an organization (and whereappropriate, from outside the organization) to give one, holistic viewof each customer in real-time. This allows customer facing employees insuch areas as sales, customer support, and marketing to make quick yetinformed decisions on everything from cross-selling and upsellingopportunities to target marketing strategies to competitive positioningtactics.

The explosion in social media and social networks is changing the waypeople connect and communicate, much of it occurring in real-time andnear-real-time. As used herein, “social media” and the “social web”encompass and include any or all online services and networkedtechnologies (such as social networks, blogs, forums, microblogs, reviewsites, news sites and surveys), in which consumers and customers arepermitted or encouraged to communicate, share, publish or review ideas,product, people or other subjects among one or more collaborators. Thecontent generated within these technologies is called user-generatedcontent. As used herein “real-time” means the real-time and nearreal-time enabling of users to receive information over the web as soonas it is published by its authors. Millions of Internet-based socialinteractions occur daily and large subsets of those interactions involveproduct service or support problems currently being experience bycustomers. Social media is disrupting customer care in that demographicshifts have caused phone support to be used only as a last resort. Thereare an ever increasing number of ways that customers request supportwhich results in multiple social network and traditional supportchannels that need to be serviced by a business. Furthermore, customershave discovered they get better support when they complain publicly andvisibly. Legacy CRM systems were built around phone as the core supportchannel and are not well-suited to processing and organizing socialnetwork information. This often results in bad user experiences thatcause negative publicity and missed opportunities to have positive andvisible interactions with customers and prospects.

In addition, there is an increasing use of online Internet supportcommunities (sometimes called peer-to-peer support) that allow customersto self-service support problems by searching knowledge bases orweb-content for their problem and posted solutions or by askingquestions on-line and getting support from another user. Customers thatcare about their brand and servicing customer realize that they shouldmonitor and participate in these Internet support social mediacommunities and integrating social media data into their CRM andcustomer support systems.

Social CRM attempts to integrate social websites and related technologyinto traditional CRM systems to provide another way for businesses toconnect with customers and prospects. Social CRM that provides customersupport differs from most of the existing social media solutions thathave been designed for marketing, that is, connecting with prospects andexisting customers to sell new products and solutions, and not designedfor use by a customer service agent to provide customer service andsupport.

SUMMARY

Social peer-to-peer class CRM systems allow customers to answer eachother's support questions without contacting a customer servicerepresentative by providing a website and infrastructure that allows auser to post questions about a business's product and to receive supportanswers from other third party users who are usually not affiliated withthe business.

However there is still a need to provide agent-based support to answercustomers and prospects support questions arising on the social web.Many consumers know that they get better service by posting theirquestions, complaints and support requests on Internet social networks.The agent trying to provide this type of support is faced with a myriadof issues. The support questions may be in the form of unstructuredInternet website posts streaming in with no associated priority orrelevance. There may be no visibility as to whether a post has alreadybeen answered or if it is part of an ongoing conversation (also known asa “thread”). It may not be known if the support post is from an existingcustomer since there is usually no means to connect a social “handle” (auser's web name) to a customer CRM database record. To add to thedifficulties of communicating efficiently in a social network supportenvironment, some social network communication conduits restrict thelength or content of messages and do not allow file attachments and thelike.

In order to service such requests, an agent is forced to use multiplepoint solutions that often include re-keying and retyping informationinto different and unrelated social communication tools. In addition,the agent may not be able to easily access and see relatedknowledge-based articles or other existing answers to a particularcustomer support problem. Customer support responses to customersfrequently contain procedural steps and knowledge-based articles whichcan exceed the data and message constraints of the Internet socialnetwork. The agent is frequently unable to easily convert the customer'sidentity on a social network (Twitter and Facebook for example) into avalid customer email address in order to respond directly back to thecustomer so the agent is obligated to respond to customers via thecommunication conduit from which they initiate the support request. Thismeans that the data and message constraints of that communicationconduit could prevent an agent from providing a complete answer to thecustomer's question.

Because of the lack of visibility into what questions have existinganswers which can be pushed out to the customer and whether a post hasalready been claimed by an agent and being addressed, an agent'smanagers are not able to effectively scale the workload or to prioritizeand reassign work across the team. There also are issues with measuringthe success of social efforts in general since there are no real-timemetrics across agents and workgroups, no integration with businessintelligence or related systems and no easy ways to understand theoverall work flows and resource allocation. This also results in alimited ability to view an agent's individual and group contributions.Furthermore, unlike traditional call-center systems, there may be no wayto take a customer satisfaction survey to report a good or bad serviceexperience, to provide feedback or to rank and report on service, or toallow the business to publish good answers to questions for otherconsumers to access when using the social network communication conduitsfrom which the support request was initiated.

The present solution solves these problems. The solution relates tocustomer relationship management systems integrated with social media(including forums and blogs) and social networks. More particularly, theinvention provides a social customer care platform system and method toallow customer care functions, and in particular customer service agentsto identify, prioritize, match and triage customer support requests thatmay arise through a social network and may be serviced using a socialnetwork. It is designed to be able to serve high-volume of customerinteractions. It provides a system and method to retrieve (also known as“harvesting”) data from multiple “listening” or aggregator services,that monitor Internet social networks for posts relevant to a business'sproducts or services. After the present system receives data from anInternet source site or aggregator, it is able to capture, monitor,filter, make sense of and respond to, in real-time, tens of thousands ofsocial interactions. It comprises role specific user-interfaces andfunctionality to match customer service environments, automatedprioritization and matching for increased agent productivity, and anautomated enterprise workflow to align social media support withexisting business processes. The solution provides the ability toconnect specific aspects of agent performance with customer satisfactionand use the answers or other communications provided by the agentthrough the solution. By providing this integrated environment, thesocial customer care system reduces customer servicing costs andprovides rapid real-time responses that may be measured according to thecompany's service level agreement (SLA) response requirements.

The solution comprises a social customer care system and method that isa real-time system with continuous self-learning, designed to discernthe context of each social interaction and automatically determine howto best respond. It can be delivered as a SaaS-based data servicetechnology platform. It has a social platform with an enterpriseworkflow that has a customer support forum in the form of an agentresponse interface that integrates with a knowledge base and otherapplications that a company uses to manage customers, products andservices. The workflow allows for matching, prioritization, workgroupmanagement and routing of customer care requests and problems fromsocial media websites. It provides for agent engagement, knowledge baseinformation automation and finally, expert agent engagement whennecessary. The system integrates with existing CRM systems to accesscustomer records and makes the results of the social care interactionavailable to the CRM systems and to marketing intelligence systems.

The social customer care system and method comprises an agent desktopthat integrates incoming information from social media sources andconduits with a knowledge base and templates of responses to similartypes of problems. It provides advanced visualization tools andautomatically prioritizes each post. The prioritization process includesa real-time, advanced triage process for the contact center to surfacesocial interactions that are worth an agent's time, with a completeframework for action (including research, response and reassignment) allin one place. It allows for reassignment of the social interaction (alsoknown as the “conversation”) to other agents and for the problem to beprioritized and re-prioritized as necessary. It also allows forautomated prioritization and matching of the customer's problem with anagent to increase productivity and quality. It provides forcommunication with the customer through third party Internetcommunication conduits (for example, Twitter or Facebook). It alsoallows for delivery of enhanced communication with the customer througha response portal through which only the customer and an assignedcustomer service agent can see the parts of a conversation thread. Itprovides for integrated conversation threading and audit trailvisibility to agents and their supervisors so they can view the fullconversation with the customer at the present time or in the future. Asa result, agents no longer have to “alt-tab” their way throughdisconnected applications, copy and paste across systems, and searchsilowed (stored) information.

It has a supervisor desktop that allows the agent's supervisor to viewthe agent's work and interaction, prioritize and measure the workgroup'sperformance. Included in that measurement is support for and tracking ofkey performance metrics or SLA performance targets that are companycommitted service-level-targets (for example, time to respond to acustomer query) that confirm the company is meeting its business targetsfor service quality for social engagement. Additionally, the responseportal allows the inclusion of customer satisfaction surveys or otherquestionnaires to measure an agent's SLAs.

The system and method also provides for a manager dashboard that candisplay and summarize aggregate statistics about all customer socialmedia and agent interactions. Advance visualization tools assistmanagers in tracking system-level throughput and flow rates around keysocial media processes. The enterprise workflow includes a team workflowthat supports 24/7 support requirements and distributed workgroups inmultiple geographic areas. It identifies backlogs and potential backlogsand provides solutions to remedy. The social customer care solution canbe integrated with listeners (customers, prospects), CRM systems andknowledge management databases. It can also be integrated withpeer-to-peer support communities.

The core of the described application includes a SaaS-based data servicetechnology platform that provides the following modules and associatedfunctionality:

Enterprise Workflow—

This application provides the functionality for a configurable softwareas a service (SaaS) software application for setting up business rulesand controlling and coordinating the actions of the modules of thesocial customer care system and method described herein and theirinteraction with the customer, social network websites, support forums,knowledge databases, customer records, CRM systems and marketingintelligence systems. It provides the workflow control for agentengagement, knowledge based automation and expert engagement formatching, prioritizing, controlling workgroups and routing of data andinformation within the social customer care system. The enterpriseworkflow also controls input to and output from external systems such associal networks, CRM systems, marketing intelligence systems. Itcontrols access to data such as customer records, knowledge databasesand local databases of information available to agents and other usersof the social customer care system.

Customer Response Portal—

This application provides the functionality for the customer serviceagent to send a response to a customer via the customer's chosen socialnetwork communication conduit and still support a full response eventhough the communication conduit may have data and message lengthrestrictions. The response portal is the public/external face of thesystem described herein, and, in addition to other features, it can actas a knowledge base of prior conversations so that existing solutionscan be reused (aka self-help), without the cost of a support agent'sinvolvement It allows customers to take a satisfaction survey or tootherwise rank and report on the service they have received. It does soby providing a shortened link back to a business-specific responseportal provided by the solution where customers can see more detailsabout the answer to their support request, view knowledge-basedarticles, see related posts and answers and answer questions about thematerial provided or the customer service agent's service. Parts of theresponse portal can be private and confidential for the particularcustomer and part of the response portal can be made available to thepublic as a knowledge source for others with similar problems.

Conversation Consolidation and Management—

This application provides the functionality for managing public commentsabout a product or brand. Public comments, particularly by influentialcustomers or prospects may positively or negatively influence thereputation of a business or the reputation of its products and services.In the realm of customer service, to insure proper “closure” and asatisfied customer, all parts of the conversation should be visible andchronologically ordered for the agent. If escalation is required, theentire “conversation” (interaction) should be transferred as a cohesiveunit. While private conversations in social media are bi-directional(aka “threaded”), the technologies used for public messaging (forexample Twitter & blog postings) often operate using a broadcast format.Even in cases where posts and responses are threaded, the relatedness ofinformation is not typically preserved by the listeners and scrapersthat harvest the data prior to reaching the present system. As such,it's not easy to tell which unique social media posts in aggregateconstitute a single conversation. To make matters worse, conversationswith CSR's may switch social network channels, from Twitter to email asone example. The present system and method allows the detection withhigh probability that different messages from varied sources andusernames are all from the same individual and all part of the samelarger conversation. By consolidating customer messages and interactionsinto one cohesive conversation, the customer service organization isprovided a complete picture of a customer's present and historicalinteractions with their business.

The conversation consolidation and management function comprises asystem and method for automatically locating, identifying, consolidatingand managing public comments across Internet based social networks in asocial network customer relationship management system comprising:inputting into memory a post created by a third party at an Internetsocial network site, the post having a third party's web name;determining if the third party's web name does not exist in a databaseaccessible to the social network CRM system and if it does not, addingthe third party's web name to the database; if the social network CRMsystem indicates there is an ongoing customer support conversation,performing an identification unification process across other Internetsocial network sites to find other posts from the third party; andattaching the other posts from the third party that are found on theother Internet social network sites to the ongoing customer supportconversation.

The method further comprises if the third party's web name does notexist in the database accessible to the social network CRM system andhas been newly added to the database, creating a new ongoing customersupport conversation; and adding the new ongoing customer supportconversation to an available queue for action by a customer supportmanagement representative. The method further comprises creating a thirdparty unique identifier key that represents a third party's web name andthe Internet social network on which the third party uses the thirdparty's web name; and determining if the third party unique identifierkey already exists in the database. If the third party unique keyalready exists in the database, setting a flag to indicate that thethird party's web name has been verified. The third party unique key maybe saved in the database. At least of one third party unique keys areaccessed from the database and if ongoing customer support conversationsexist for this handle (user/third party web name), the ongoing customersupport conversation is identified as being associated with the thirdparty identified in the third party unique key. The identificationunification function and processing can be performed prior to inputtinginto memory the third party post to locate, identify and unify userprofiles across Internet-based social network websites.

Dynamic Scoring Based on Customer Business Context—

This application provides the functionality for placing customercomments about the products and services of a business in-context. Forexample, “hot” food may be good while a “hot” laptop is not. The presentsystem and method analyzes the business, its industry and relatedproduct categories using the business's own website and public webcontent. It forms conclusions using scoring heuristic algorithms thatallow better prioritization and disambiguation of comments made aboutthe business. Agents can validate or override scoring heuristics and thesystem self-learns to provide better customer service and responses.

Incentive Based Social Evangelism—

Product advertising is becoming less effective as customers turn tofriends and social contacts for recommendations about products andservices. In the advertising model, the carriers, such as televisionnetworks, billboards, magazines and the like, are paid for deliveringadvertising messages to the consumer. In the emerging model of socialevangelism, consumers assume this role, can also be incentivized withcompensation and can be empowered to pass on incentives to others. Thisapplication provides the functionality for an infrastructure to allow abusiness's customers to place a coupon generation widget or code snippetonto one or many webpages, such that their friends and colleagues see anoffer that is recommended by someone they trust. Users can use thewidget to print a custom, uniquely encoded (for closed-loop tracking)coupon, which gives them a discount or other benefit at the promotedmerchant. Each time a friend or social contact uses (consumes) a couponprinted from one of the widgets, the consumer that posted the coupon maybe given some form of compensation.

Identity Unification—

This application provides the functionality for allowing the socialcustomer care system to use data from and existing user profile, calleda known reference profile (KRP) from a customer database such as a CRMdatabase or online social community to locate similar profiles acrossother social networks and database management systems. Statisticalcorrelation algorithms use the data gathered to predict which profilesbelong to the same individual. For example, a browser may be currentlyviewing a LinkedIn profile or CRM record of a known customer (the KRP).Upon command (such as clicking an available button or activating apull-down menu), the system extracts key information about the customerfrom the previously existing profile such as name, address, hometown,birthdate, employer, college and the like. This system then uses certainvalues collected to search other social networking sites such asFacebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus and the like for people withsimilar attributes. As each list of results comes back, the systemextracts values from those found profiles as well. It then runs asimilarity algorithm and predicts which profile from each additionalsite is most likely to be the same person. It stores this information ina database along with various scoring artifacts. Each time a differentuser runs the calculation, similar results are scored. There are atleast three types of validation thresholds to determine the resultingsimilarity score. The first is having a high-enough correlation scoreresulting from the similarity algorithms. The second is having enoughhuman reviews of the information to verify same identity. Finally, ifnone of the above two validation events occur and no human has indicatedit is not the same person, then once a threshold of same matching hitsoccurs without the person being connected to someone else, the systemassumes it is the same person and no further validation is required.

The identification unification function comprises a computer-implementedmethod for automatically locating, identifying and unifying userprofiles comprising the steps of: inputting a user profile anddesignating the user profile as a search subject; extractinguser-identifying data attributes from the user profile; searching atleast one Internet-based social network website for users with profilescontaining data attributes similar to the search subjectuser-identifying data attributes; identifying a social network siteprofile for a third party from the social network website based on acloseness of a match of social network site profile attributes for thethird party to the search subject user-attributes; using the socialnetwork site profile attributes for the third party and theuser-identifying attributes, running a scoring algorithm to produce alikelihood score that the third party and the search subject from theuser profile is the same person; and if the likelihood score meets acertainty threshold criteria, using the social network site profileattributes for the third party and the user-identifying attributes inthe user profile for the search subject to search additionalInternet-based social network websites for data for the search subjectbased on the social network site profile attributes user profiles andthe user-identifying data attributes running a scoring algorithm toproduce a likelihood score that the third party and the search subjectfrom the user profile is the same person.

The method further comprises computing a link relationship indicatorthat links the user profile for the search subject with the socialnetwork site profile for the third party. The method of furthercomprises repeating the searching, identifying and using steps formultiple Internet-based social network websites resulting in a totalmatch score for each social network site profile identified on therespective Internet-based social network. The method can be used tolocate, identify and unify user profiles across other databases such asCRM databases and other databases that contain user profile information.

Quickstart Process—

This application provides the functionality for scoring the relevancyand priority of product and brand “mentions” data taken from socialmedia postings. It derives certain keywords to enhance the process ofrouting the matched posts to the correct workgroups or agents. Itcomprises allowing a weighted list of product-related words, phrases,model numbers and the like to be designated as domain specificvocabulary (DSV). The present system and method allows the DSV to bemanually or automatically assembled to be able to configure thepost/conversation scoring and routing process. This automated approachcan occur in near-real-time and it is more efficient, in that it avoidserrors associated with a manual approach. The system and method canbegin with sparse data, for example, only the company name and itsvertical industry. The application crawls the Internet, capturingrelated terms, phrases, model numbers, executive names, and other keydata. Its algorithms cluster these terms according to frequency,indicators of positive or negative sentiment (sometimes known as“emotional tell's” and proximity to product or model names. After theclustering occurs, the application runs a second clustering algorithm(known as bi-clustering or co-clustering) to select and weight the termsfor placement in the DSV. The results may be displayed for manualconfirmation or adjustment by a human. Alternative, the results canautomatically updated the DSV with the data derived from the processwithout human intervention.

Consumer Resolver Matching—

This application provides the functionality for finding existing priorconsumers that have had the same problem solved as that being expressedby a new consumer. By putting two consumers together for peer-support,the company saves the costs associated with “agent” support.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

These and other features, aspects and advantages of the presentinvention will become better understood with regard to the followingdescription, appended claims, and accompanying drawings wherein:

FIG. 1 illustrates a functional block diagram of an embodiment of thepresent invention;

FIG. 2 illustrates a functional block diagram of an embodiment of thepresent invention;

FIGS. 3A and 3B are flow diagrams of the customer response portalfunction processing;

FIG. 4 is a diagram of customer interaction with an agent's responsethrough social network communication conduits;

FIG. 5 is an exemplary depiction of an agent user interface of thesocial customer care system;

FIG. 6 is an exemplary depiction of an agent user interface of thesocial customer care system for reassigning and changing priority;

FIG. 7 is an exemplary depiction of a response with knowledge databaseinformation of the social customer care system

FIG. 8 is an exemplary depiction of a response portal of the socialcustomer care system for responding to a customer problem initiated at asocial network communication conduit;

FIG. 9 is an exemplary depiction of a conversation thread and audittrail of the social customer care system;

FIG. 10 is an exemplary depiction an agent's desktop showing acommunication conduit response display the social customer care system;

FIG. 11 is an exemplary depiction of a supervisor's desktop of thesocial customer care system;

FIG. 12 is an exemplary depiction of a user interface showingone-to-many response of the social customer care system;

FIG. 13 is an exemplary depiction of a manager's dashboard of the socialcustomer care system;

FIG. 14 is a flow diagram of the identity unification processing of thesocial customer care system;

FIG. 15 is a flow diagram of a site searching process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system;

FIG. 16 is a flow diagram of a scoring process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system;

FIG. 17 is a table showing an exemplary score model of a scoring processof the identity unification processing of the social customer caresystem;

FIG. 18 is a flow diagram of a score compare process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system;

FIG. 19 is a flow diagram of another scoring process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system;

FIG. 20 is a flow diagram of another scoring process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system;

FIG. 21 is a flow diagram of a results storing process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system;

FIG. 22 is a table showing an exemplary score model of a scoring processof the identity unification processing of the social customer caresystem.

FIG. 23 is a flow diagram of a conversation consolidation and managementprocessing of the social customer care system;

FIG. 24 is a flow diagram of a handler checking process of conversationconsolidation and management processing of the social customer caresystem;

FIG. 25 is a flow diagram of a an open conversation check process of theconversation consolidation and management processing of the socialcustomer care system;

FIG. 26 is a flow diagram of a handler process of conversationconsolidation and management processing of the social customer caresystem; and

FIG. 27 is a flow diagram of known handler process of conversationconsolidation and management processing of the social customer caresystem.

FIG. 28 is a flow diagram of the response portal processing of thesocial customer care system.

FIG. 29 is a table showing customer options while interacting with theresponse portal webpage of the social customer care system.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF INVENTION

FIG. 1 depicts a computer system and network 100 suitable forimplementing the system and method of providing a social customer caresystem. A server computer 105 includes an operating system 110 forcontrolling the overall operation of the server 105 which may connectthrough a communications network 170 to one or more communicationconduits (social networks) 160, a web-based response portal 165, auser's browser application 175 and local computers 180 having a userinterface device. The server computer 105 hosts a software as a service(SaaS) application comprising the social customer care system platform115. The server 105 can also be connected to a customer service agent185 either through a local communication network or through thecommunication network 170. The server 105 allows for the connection ofthe social customer care system 115 to one or more existing CRM systems195, marketing intelligence systems 90 and to commercial databasesincluding knowledge databases 95 and CRM databases 85. The customerservice agent 185 may also have access to local databases 190 that storevarious customer records and other information. The social customer caresystem 115 comprises multiple software applications including anenterprise workflow application 120, a response portal application 135,a conversation consolidation and management application 125, dynamicscoring application 130, an incentive based social evangelismapplication 150, an identity unification application 140, a quickstartprocess application 145 and a customer resolver matching application155. The social customer care system 100 may operate in real-time toallow for immediate processing of and responses to customer enteredquestions and problems initiated at a social network communicationconduit 160.

The enterprise workflow application 120 provides a configurable softwareapplication client for setting up business rules and controlling andcoordinating the actions of the modules of the system and method of thesocial customer care system 115. The enterprise workflow also controlsinput to and output from external systems such as social networks 160,CRM systems 195, marketing intelligence systems 90 and controls accessto data such as customer records that may reside in CRM databases 85,knowledge databases 95 and local databases 190 of information availableto agents 185 and other users of the social customer care system.

The customer response portal 135 provides the functionality for thecustomer service agent 185 to send a response to a customer through acommunication network 170 via the customer's chosen social networkcommunication conduit 160. It allows a full response even though thecommunication conduit 160 may have data and message length restrictions.It allows for customers to take a survey or complete a questionnaire andto otherwise rank and report on service they have received. It does soby providing a shortened link back to a SaaS application web-hosted andbusiness branded response portal 165 where customers can see moredetails about the answer to their support request, view knowledge-basedarticles, see related posts and answers and answer questions about thematerial provided or the customer service agent's service. Parts of theresponse portal 165 can be private and confidential for the particularcustomer and part of the response can be made available to the public.

The conversation consolidation and management application 125 providesthe functionality for joining multiple public comments about a productor brand in one threaded conversation. Public comments, particularly byinfluential customers or prospects may positively or negativelyinfluence the reputation of a business or the reputation of its productsand services and thus have a large impact on the bottom line. In therealm of customer service, to insure proper “closure” and a satisfiedcustomer, all parts of the conversation are visible and chronologicallyordered. If escalation is required, the entire “conversation”(interaction) should be transferred as a cohesive unit. The presentsystem and method allows the detection with high probability thatdifferent messages from varied sources such as social networkcommunication conduits 160 and usernames are all from the sameindividual and all part of the same larger conversation. Byconsolidating customer messages and interactions into one cohesiveconversation, the customer service organization is provided a completepicture of present and historical customer interactions with thebusiness.

The dynamic scoring based on customer business context application 130provides the functionality for placing customer comments about theproducts and services of a business in context. The present system andmethod analyses the business, its industry and related productcategories using the business's own website and public web content. Itforms conclusions using scoring heuristic algorithms that allow betterprioritization and disambiguation of comments made about the business orits products and services. Agents 185 can validate or override scoringheuristics and the system self-learns to provide better customer serviceand responses.

The incentive based social evangelism application 150 provides thefunctionality to allow a brand's customers to place a coupon generationwidget or code snippet onto one or many webpages, such that theirfriends and colleagues see an offer that is recommended by someone theytrust. Users can use the widget to print a custom, uniquely encoded (forclosed-loop tracking) coupon, which gives them a discount or otherbenefit at the promoted merchant. Each time a friend or social contactuses (consumes) a coupon printed from one of the widgets, the consumerthat posed the coupon may be given some form of compensation.

The identity unification application 140 provides the functionality forallowing the social customer care system 115 to use data from anexisting user profile, called a known reference profile (KRP) from acustomer database such as a CRM database 85 or online social communityto locate similar profiles across other social networks 160 and databasemanagement systems. Statistical correlation algorithms use the datagathered to predict which profiles belong to the same individual. Forexample, a browser may be currently viewing a LinkedIn Profile or CRMrecord of a known customer (the KRP). Upon command (such as clicking anavailable button or activating a pull-down menu), the application 175extracts key information about the customer from the page such as name,address, hometown, birthdate, employer, college and the like. Thisapplication 175 then uses certain values collected to search othersocial networking sites 160 such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus andthe like for people with similar names. As each list of results comesback, the identity unification application 140 extracts values fromthose found profiles as well. It then runs a similarity algorithm andpredicts which profile from each additional site is most likely to bethe same person. It stores this information in a database 190 along withvarious scoring artifacts. Each time a different client runs thecalculation, similar results are scored. There are various types ofvalidation thresholds. The first is a certain hit where a unique valuefound matches another unique value (such as a user's email address). Thesecond is a high-enough correlation score resulting from initialequivalency type algorithms. The third is enough human reviews of theinformation to verify the same identity. Finally, if none of the abovevalidation events occur and no human has indicated this is not the sameperson, then once a threshold of “same matching hits” occurs without theperson being connected to someone else, the system assumes it is thesame person and no further searching is required.

The quickstart process application 145 provides the functionality forscoring the relevancy and priority of product and brand mentions datataken from social media postings. It creates a weighted list of certainkeywords to automate the process of routing social posts to the correctsupport agent or team. It comprises allowing a weighted list ofproduct-related words, phrases, model numbers and the like to bedesignated as Domain Specific Vocabulary (DSV). The present system andmethod allows the DSV to be automatically assembled rather than manuallyassembled to be able to configure the scoring and routing process. Sincethis can occur in real-time it is more efficient, does not requiremanual labor and avoids errors associated with such manual labor. Thesystem and method can begin with only company name and vertical industryof the company. The application crawls the Internet, capturing relatedterms, phrases, model numbers, executive names, and other key data. Itsalgorithms cluster these terms in buckets according to frequency,sentiment indicators and proximity to product or model names. After theclustering, the application runs a second clustering algorithm(bi-clustering or co-clustering) to select and weight the terms forplacement in the DSV. The results may be displayed for manualconfirmation or adjustment by a human 185 or the results canautomatically update the DSV with the data derived from the processwithout human intervention.

The consumer resolver matching application 155 provides thefunctionality for finding other consumers that have had the same problemas that being faced by the current consumer. The two users can beconnected directly for self-service and save the cost of a paid-agentresolution or the current consumer can be redirected to the solutiondocumentation created for the original consumer. This content typicallyresides either in the knowledge base, the community forums or on theresponse portal (which is the public-view of the data contained in thewhole system described herein).

FIG. 2 illustrates a functional block diagram 200 of an embodiment ofthe present invention. The social customer care system 205 and itsenterprise workflow FIG. 1, 120 provide the functionality for matching,prioritization, workgroup management and routing 210 of customer carerequests and problems from social media websites FIG. 1, 160. The socialcustomer care system and method 205 may be a real time system withcontinuous self-learning capability, designed to discern the context ofeach social interaction and automatically determine the optimal supportchannel to provide the best customer service experience. It can bedelivered as a SaaS-based data service technology platform. The socialcustomer care system 205 provides for agent engagement 215, knowledgebase information lookup automation 220 and expert agent engagement whennecessary 225. The social customer care system 205 integrates with CRMsystems 255 to allow access to customer records 250 and makes theresults of the social care interaction available to the CRM systems 255and to marketing intelligence systems 260. The social customer caresystem 205 uploads and downloads information to and from related supportforums and applications 230 such as customer support forums 235,databases containing knowledge-based articles and information 240 andsupport notes 245 as well as from CRM applications.

FIGS. 3A and 3B are flow diagrams of the customer response portalfunction processing 300. The customer response portal 300 includes aresponse function (or widget) in its web client user interface that actsas a broker to send agent responses through an application server whichdispatches and tracks the responses to the third party communicationconduit (for example Twitter, Facebook and the like). The customerresponse portal application 300 receives a broadcast of a supportrequest from a customer via a third party social network communicationconduit 305 and displays the threaded-history of a conversation thatoriginated on the social-web, and occurred between the customer and thesocial support agent 305. The system response portal assigns and tracksthe support request to an agent 310 by placing the post in an availablequeue so that the next available agent can claim it and begin theconversation. The agent researches, collates documentation, reviews,customer history and makes decisions about customer entitlement (offersor coupons) 315. The agent crafts a response and sends through thepresent system it to the customer via a social network communicationconduit 320. All communication and other conversation history data isstored in the system database and is available for retrieval, processingor display by any of the system components. If the total length of theresponse exceeds the limits of the social network communication conduit325, then the system's response portal function will store the fullcontents of the message for display on the response portal, truncate themessage to comply with the limits of the communication conduit andinsert a URL weblink to the response portal webpage 330 and processingcontinues in step 335 with the sending of the message to the socialnetwork communication conduit. The message recipient on the socialnetwork can click the URL to view the full conversation thread andmessage payload within the response portal. If total length of theresponse does not exceeds the limits of the social network communicationconduit 325, then processing continues in step 335 with the sending ofthe message to the social network communication conduit. The message mayinclude some or all of the following information: agent and useridentification, specific identifies associated with this particularagent-customer communication, source address of the communicationconduit, destination address (for example the customer's social networkcommunication conduit account), full detailed response (or abbreviatedresponse with link to a webpage response portal), threaded conversationhistory, links to knowledge based articles and the like.

In FIG. 3B, the customer receives the message from the social customercare application via the communication conduit 345. If the messagecontains a response portal website link 350, the customer visitsresponse portal 355 and may need to be authenticated and then views theagent's response 360 plus a full thread of prior responses. The responsecould also include viewing knowledge based articles 360 or otherfunctions as shown herein in FIG. 4 and processing ends 370. If themessage contains all the support response, the customer receives theagent response 365 and processing ends 370.

FIG. 4 is a diagram 400 of customer interaction with an agent's responsethrough social network communication conduits 405. The customerinteraction can be selected from the following actions:

-   -   Viewing the entire conversation thread 410;    -   Authenticating the customer as the communication conduit account        holder 415;    -   Viewing or sending private content 420;    -   Consuming an incentive offer supplied by the agent 425;    -   Searching and viewing knowledge based articles 430;    -   Responding and closing the case as resolved 435;    -   Providing additional information to the agent or amending        previously supplied information 440;    -   Searching for support interactions involving the same or similar        issues 445;    -   Providing feedback via a survey or other means regarding the        support the customer received 450; or    -   Making additional product purchases via an order management        system interface connection that is provided to the customer        455.

FIG. 5 is an exemplary depiction of an agent user interface of thesocial customer care system 500. It shows work assigned to the agent505, pending support requests 510, due time and date 515, customerprofile 520 for the current support request being processed and customersupport request history 525. It includes links to a knowledge base 530and template responses, in this case which are organized by computer orperipheral type (desktop, laptop, mobile device, networking, internet,wireless and storage) 540.

FIG. 6 is an exemplary depiction of an agent user interface of thesocial customer care system for reassigning and changing priority 600.The agent or manager user interface shows the current priority 605 ofthe support request, its history 610 and assignment 615. It provides thetools to reassign 620 and change the priority of the request 625.

FIG. 7 is an exemplary depiction of a response with knowledge databaseinformation of the social customer care system 700. The agent userinterface 705 depicts the current support request 710 and links toknowledge based articles 715 relevant to the support request.

FIG. 8 is an exemplary depiction of a response portal webpage of thesocial customer care system for responding to a customer probleminitiated at a social network communication conduit 800. The responseportal depicts what is displayed to the customer when the customervisits the response portal webpage 805 and views conversation thread(including agent answers) support request answer 810 which may forexample include survey questions, promotional offers and methods ofadditional assistance specific to this customer interaction.

FIG. 9 is an exemplary depiction of a conversation thread and audittrail of the social customer care system 900. The agent user interface905 is able to display all conversation threads 910 so as to have anintegrated picture of the customer support request and prior customersupport requests 915, customer support agent responses 920 and anyadditional information entered by the customer 925.

FIG. 10 is an exemplary depiction an agent's desktop showing acommunication conduit response display of the social customer caresystem 1000. The agent user interface 1005 displays all conversationthreads 1010 so as to have an integrated picture of the customer supportrequest 1015, customer support agent response 1020 and any additionalinformation entered by the customer 1025 along with a response box 1030,history 1035 and open/close status 1040.

FIG. 11 is an exemplary depiction of a supervisor's desktop of thesocial customer care system 1100. The supervisor desktop 1105 depictsworkgroup status, system load 1110 and responses over time 1115, agentactivity 1120, request status 1125 and due dates 1130.

FIG. 12 is an exemplary depiction of an agent user interface showingone-to-many response of the social customer care system 1200. It depictsmultiple responses and support requests 1205, assignments 1210, topcustomer influencers 1215 and knowledge bases 1220 and templateresponses 1225 available to the agent.

FIG. 13 is an exemplary depiction of a manager's dashboard of the socialcustomer care system 1300. It gives managers the ability to accesssupport request status data 1305 including time to respond 1310, averageagent responses per hour 1315, number of support requests closed peragent per hour 1320, flush rate 1325, queue backlog 1330, customersatisfaction scores 1335, queue backlog and the like. In this example,data can be viewed in graphic 1340 or table form 1345 by date 1350,priority 1355, workgroup 1360 and status 1365.

FIG. 14 is a flow diagram of the identity unification processing of thesocial customer care system 1400. The following is a glossary of termsfor the identity unification function:

Attribute match score: The component of the “total match score” createdfor a “found user” that occurred due to exact match between specificattributes (e.g. krp.lastName==foundUser.lastName). For example, if theattribute is one of the globally unique ones, this would constitute a“certain hit”;

-   -   Certain hit: When a “guaranteed” unique value in the KRP (for        example, email, phone, Social Security Number, Skype handle)        matches a record on a search site, the system associates a        certainty percentage that this is the same user, usually 100        percent. Data found from the search site may be added to the KRP        to improve searching and scoring on subsequent sites. Certain        hits are better and the process can bias “search-site” order to        prioritize those searches during the processing.    -   Community: General term for a social site or online venue where        people register and visit. The term community can be used as a        “source” (for the KRP) or as a “search site” (to find matching        people);    -   Concept overlap score: This is the component of the “total match        score” created for a “found user” that occurs due to abstract        concepts (e.g. sports) found in free-form text fields on both        profiles;    -   Found user(s): The data/record representing a user at a “search        site” who was found using data from the KRP to conduct a search.        Note that these are not necessarily the same person, but the        subset of candidates for the comparison & scoring algorithms;    -   Friend overlap score: The component of the “total match score”        created for a “found user” that occurred due to friends with        similar names in the respective friend lists;    -   Fuzzy Match score: The component of the “total match score”        created for a “found user” that occurred due to frequency of        words found in free-form text fields;    -   KRP: Known reference profile is the initial data used to start        searching other communities. The “known” user-profile whose data        is used as the basis for searching other sites to find        “identities” which (based on certainty or probability) can be        used to join (link or unify) with this “original” person/user;    -   Minimum match threshold: This the minimum score that a found        record must achieve from the initial scoring process to be kept        and considered for further scoring processing. After the second        scoring process, records below a (per-site) threshold are        discarded and only the near-ties (top-scorers) are passed to        further scoring processes;    -   Search site: An online social or community site where        people/users with local identities visit and socialize or        support one another. This can be an online site such as        Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Lithium Communities and the like.        The search site could also be a private CRM system but        typically, the CRM will provide the “KRP”.    -   Tie, top-scorers or near-ties: When several found user records        at a given search site score above some minimum threshold but        there is no clear winner (scores are statistically “near” each        other), then these records are said to “tie” and more data is        needed to determine who (if any) may be the same person as the        KRP;    -   Total match score: This invention uses multiple different        techniques to measure similarity, meaning the probability of        equal-identity, between user-profiles from disparate        communities. After the multiple possible scoring passes, each        “profile” results in “total match score” describing its overall        likelihood of being the same person as that described by the        KRP. The “certain hit” techniques potentially add additional        data to the KRP; and    -   (User) profile: A set of fields and values from a        “registered-user” record in some online service, community or        database (for example, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, other social        network sites and the like).

The identity management software function takes data from an existinguser profile (called KRP for “known reference profile”) from a customerdatabase (for example, CRM) or online social community, and then usesthe values found within it to locate similar profiles across othersocial sites and in a data base management system (if such a system isavailable), and then runs statistical correlation algorithms to predictwhich profiles belong to the same “real” (human) person.

For example, if a user's browser is currently viewing a LinkedIn Profileor CRM record of a known customer (the KRP), the user may click a buttonand the system extracts key values from the page including first, last,hometown, birthdate, employer, college, etc. The identity unificationprocess then uses a few values (first, last, hometown) to search othersites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus for people with similarnames. As each list of results comes back, the process extracts valuesfrom those profiles as well. A similarity algorithm is run that predictswhich profile from each additional site is most likely to be the sameperson. It stores this information in a central database along withvarious scoring artifacts. Each time a different client runs thecalculation, similar results are scored. There are various types ofvalidation thresholds. The first is a certain hit where a unique valuefound matches another unique value (such as a user's email address). Thesecond is a high-enough correlation score resulting from initialequivalency type algorithms. The third is enough human reviews of theinformation to verify the same identity. Finally, if none of the abovevalidation events occur and no human has indicated this is not the sameperson, then once a threshold of “same matching hits” occurs without theperson being connected to someone else, the system assumes it is thesame person and no further searching is required.

Turning now to FIG. 14, processing starts 1401. An existing userprofile, also called a KRP, of the person to be searched is used as thestarting data 1402. The KRP will contain some number of attributes suchas those shown in FIG. 22. KRP of the person to be searched for (thesearch subject) may be retrieved from a customer database in a CRMsystem or from an online social community. Third party online socialmedia websites to search are determined (for example, Twitter, Facebook,LinkedIn and other social media sites) 1403. At least one third partyonline website is selected and access is confirmed using authorizationsor tokens 1404. The selection of the first online website is to try tofind the website that will provide the best information to help identifyand verify the person believed to be set forth in the KRP for the searchsubject. This can mean the website that has the largest set of users oris known to have good search results and data rich user Profiles to addto the KRP. The KRP attributes for search subject that are available aresorted into an ordered list of likely uniqueness 1405. The likelihood ofuniqueness may vary by website. The website most likely to yield resultsis selected to search is based on the now available data 1406 and asearch is initiated on that third party website 1407. If results are notfound 1408, then the next third party website to search is determinedbased on the KRP attributes for the search subjects and likelihood thatthe website will yield results 1414. If another website exists 1415 thenprocessing continues in step 1407. If another website does not exist tosearch 1415, then continues in step 1412. If results are found 1408,then the search results are added to a master list of found data fromthird party website 1409 and processing continues in step 1410. If onlyone record is found or the search results are otherwise lacking 1410,new attributes and fuzzy terms are added to the KRP for the searchsubject to assist in future searching and scoring 1411 and processingcontinues in step 1405. Scoring occurs by attribute similar to what isshown in FIG. 22. In any case if there are more third party websites tosearch 1412, then the next third party website to search is selected1413 and processing continues in step 1406. If there are no more thirdparty websites to search 1412, then the first scoring method process andalgorithms are initiated 1416. Then a second alternative scoring methodprocess and algorithms are initiated 1417. Website scores for the KRPsearch subject attributes are compared for near ties 1418. If there arenear ties, another website scoring methods process and algorithm may beinitiated 1419. If there are still near ties, yet another scoring methodprocess and algorithms may be run 1420. Four scoring method processesand algorithms are shown in this FIG. 14, but there is no limit to thenumber of scoring method processes and algorithms that may be run by thesoftware. If the result of one of these scoring methods changes a score,then per-site scoring and comparison may be run yet again 1421. Theresults are stored by KRP attributes, generally to a database 1422. Theprocess owner (software and/or human) is notified that processing iscomplete 1423 and processing ends 1424.

FIG. 15 is a flow diagram of a site searching process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system 1500.Processing starts 1501. If there is access to a user search applicationprogramming interface (API) for the social media or other website to besearched 1502, then an authentication is made to API endpoint 1503. Ifaccess is not allowed 1504, then a “headless browser” (meaning a browserwithout a graphical user interface (GUI)) is initiated 1510. Thesoftware process logs in to or accesses the website (which may be via anhttp command) 1511 and the desired query is posted 1512 (which may bevia an HTTP post) and processing continues in step 1506. If access isallowed 1504, then a search is initiated via the API using the KRP ofthe search subject and other Profile information 1505 to find a personprofile and attributes that come close to or match the KRP for thesearch subject. If matching results are found 1506, the search results(if any) are retrieved 1507, the return results or if there are noresults, then an empty set is returned to the calling software program1508 and processing ends for this current search site 1509.

FIG. 16 is a flow diagram of a scoring process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system 1600.Processing starts 1601. The process proceeds to a social media site tobe searched 1602 and if there are no more sites with found user records1603 then processing ends 1604. Otherwise if there are any more siteswith found user records 1603 that are similar to the KRP for the searchsubject, a user record is found and examined 1605. If a found user isfound 1606, then the discrete fields or attribute values available fromthe KRP for the search subject is loaded 1607. If there any more fieldsto use for equality testing 1608 and a value is provided in the samefield on the found record 1609, the values are compared 1610 to the KRPattribute for the search subject and if they match 1611 then points areassigned as per FIG. 22 1612. Points are cumulative except when definedsets of matches occur and then the system will normally take the highestscore. If a value is not provided in the same field on the found record1609 then step 1607 is repeated.

FIG. 17 is a flow diagram of a score compare process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system 1700.Processing stars 1701. A unique list of KRP words for the search subjectfor fuzzy matching is created where intersections (closeness) betweenvalues are worth additional scoring points 1702. The process proceeds tosearch a social media website 1603 and if there are no more websiteswith found user records 1704 then processing ends 1705. Otherwise ifthere are any more web sites with found user records 1603 that match orare similar to the KRP for the study subject, the user record is foundand examined 1706. If there is another record to process 1707, thenwords are extracted from its fields and included in the list of fuzzycandidate fields 1708 for the KRP. Any distinct words are added to thefuzzy match list 1709. If there are more fuzzy candidate fields withvalues to use for the fuzzy match process 1710 then the words from thisuse record are compared to those in the KRP 1711. If a word from a founduser record fuzzy list is also found in the KRP fuzzy list 1712, thenpoints are added to a fuzzy match score for the record 1713 by KRPattribute. If there are more words to compare, processing continues forthis record. Otherwise the next user record in examined 1706 andprocessing continues until there are no more sites and no more recordsto process 1705.

FIG. 18 is a flow diagram of a score compare process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system 1800.Processing starts 1801. The process proceeds to search a website 1802using the KRP for the search subject and if there are no more sites withfound user records 1803 then processing ends 1808. Otherwise if anothersite is found with records 1803 that yield information for the studysubject, the information is scored by attribute and all found recordsfrom the list with a score that fall below a minimum match threshold areremoved 1804. The remaining records are sorted in an ordered list byscore 1805. Records that are near ties are determined by finding alltops scores whose scores fall with a certain percentage of the highestscore 1806. The remaining found users list and the number of recordsincluded in the near tie bands are returned as a result 1807 andprocessing continues in step 1803.

FIG. 19 is a flow diagram of another scoring process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system 1900.Processing starts 1901. If the KRP for the search subject which is theoriginal or additive KRP from an earlier hit does not contain a friendlist 1902, then processing ends 1907. A friend list is a list of otherprofiles that are connected to the current customer profile, for exampleall the people connected to a user of a service such as LinkedIn orFacebook or all the people that the user follows on a service such asTwitter. If the KRP for the search subject which is the original oradditive KRP from an earlier hit contains a friend list 1902, thenprocessing goes to a search web site if it has a list of found records1903. If another site with found records exists 1904, and some recordsare nearly tied for a highest score for people found at this site 1905.It connects to a search site to perform authorization sub-processing1906. The next found record within the tie group is found 1911. If thereis another user in the tie group 1910, then a friend list of the currentnear tie user 1909 is loaded and processing ends 1907. If there is notanother user in the tie group then processing continues in step 1911.

FIG. 20 is a flow diagram of another scoring process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system 2000.Processing starts 2001. If the KRP for the search subject containssufficient data for concept scoring 2002, for each word in the KRP fuzzylist, a list of abstract concepts is created 2003. A KRP containssufficient data for concept scoring if it contains text fields (e.g.tagline, about-me, favorite-things, caption, status, bio) containingmultiple words that can be generalized to more abstract concepts. Forexample “I love Apple computers and programming” could be synthesized asan affinity for the brand “Apple” and for “technology” in general. Iftwo different profiles express overlapping affinity, it indicates moresimilarity (that is, it is weighted higher) than profiles that do not.The process proceeds to search a website for the KRP search subjectattribute concepts 2004 and if there additional sites 2005 and if thecurrent site returns enough fuzzy data for the concept scoring method towork 2006 for the KRP for the search subject then for each near tierecord, each fuzzy word found on the profile a list of abstract conceptsfor that word are assembled 2007. A concept score is derived bycalculating the overlap between the KRP abstract concept created in step2003 and a profile concept list 2008. If are no more sites to search2004 or the KRP does not contain sufficient data for concept scoring2002, then processing ends 2010.

FIG. 21 is a flow diagram of a results storing process of the identityunification processing of the social customer care system 2100. Afterthe scoring process depicted in FIGS. 17 through 20, and if there is oneclear winner remaining in the list of found records 2102 and if a winnerwas found 2103 then a join record is stored to express the relationshipbetween the KRP and winning found-record profiles 2104. If no sitewinner was found processing ends 2105.

FIG. 22 is a table showing an exemplary score model of a scoring processof the identity unification processing of the social customer caresystem 2200. As an example, scoring model points may be assigned pointsas per the table. Points are cumulative except when defined “sets” ofmatches occur and then the system takes the highest score.

FIG. 23 is a flow diagram of a conversation consolidation and managementprocessing of the social customer care system 2300. Conversationconsolidation, threading and management (CCM) involves detecting with ahigh probability that different messages from similar or varied sourcesor user names used by a person (search subject) on the web are all fromthe same individual. Unifying the set messages into one cohesive(threaded) “conversation”, allows a business and its customer serviceorganization to see a complete picture of the issues and emotional stateof their customer. Public opinions on the Internet about a company'sproduct, brand service by high-influence individuals can impactreputation and sales. Companies want to insure proper issue “closure”for company's customer service interaction with a customer and show thatthe customer is satisfied. In addition, if the company can show publicvisibility to all hard-earned customer “satisfaction”, it's importantthat parts of each support/service conversation be visible andchronologically ordered for the support agent handling the issue. Ifescalation is required, this entire interaction can then be transferredas a cohesive unit to the next agent.

While private conversations in email, chat or social media are typicallybi-directional (aka “threaded”), the technologies used for publicmessages (such as Twitter & Blog postings) often exist standalone (in acontext-free representation). This means that each expression/utteranceby a customer on that social media site is a separate data item andwhile it may be displayed in date-time order, it is not treated as adiscrete-united set of records belonging to that customer. Even in caseswhere posts and responses are threaded and such relatedness-data ispreserved by the originating site, this “relatedness” information is nottypically preserved by listeners and web scrapers which harvest the datafor tools such as ours. As such, it's frequently hard to tell whichunique posts in aggregate constitute a single conversation. To makematters worse, support conversations with customer servicerepresentatives can switch social media sites, from Twitter to abranded-community or company website as an example, and with multiplesources/venues, there is no single “originating” source to supply therelatedness information.

There are at least four primary processes to capture and displayrelatedness between disparate social website posts (also known asrecords) to show that there is one “conversation” thread that belongs toa customer (search subject):

Customer (Author-handle) & source-website identification intersectedwith an existing open conversation. When a posting on a social media orother website comes from a previously known search subject(author-handle) that has been posted on the same social media website orservice (for example Twitter) and is during a time frame in which acustomer service representative for a company is interacting (has anopen conversation) with a customer, then a probability analysis is runto determine if the posting can be added to the information the companyhas collected during this interaction.

Manual agent identification entered via the agent (customer servicerepresentative) user interface. If a post has been linked with acustomer but the post is unrelated to the ongoing conversation or notfrom the customer, a user interface control (widget) allows an agent orsupervisor to manually detach the post and start new conversation withthe unrelated post. This same set of user interface controls allows theagent to merge two separate conversations together.

Cross-venue via identity unification. This is the processing describe inFIGS. 14 through 22 for identifying and unifying information for asearch subject.

Same-parent thread identification provided by originating service.Certain data-feeds are robust enough such that each post contains arecord-id which points to its parent (the “thread-id”). If such datareceived and a parent record (KRP for a search subject) exists, thesystem merges the new record to the existing thread.

Turning now to FIG. 23 2300, if a post is created by a customer (searchsubject) at an Internet site 2301, the post is retrieved and collected alistener/harvester 2302. The post is delivered to the present system2303. A database is checked to see if the “handle” for this customer ispreviously stored in or accessible to the present system (for example ina CRM database) 2305. If the customer handle is recognized by thepresent system 2306, that is, the customer matches a search subject'sdata stored in or accessible to the present system, then the systemchecks for existing open conversations (meaning interactions) with thiscustomer 2307. If the handle is not recognized by the present system2306, then the search subject's information and handle data is stored2310 and processing continues in step 2312. If an existing conversationis found 2308, then the information is added to the existingconversation data 2314 and processing ends 2317. If not, then checks aremade for known handles for this search subject at other websites and theprocessing for identity unification described in FIGS. 14 through 22occurs 2309. If other handles are stored for this search subject 2311,then a check is made for open interactions (conversations) under one ofthese other handles 2316. If a conversation is found then processingcontinues in step 2313. Otherwise, a new interaction (conversation) iscreated 2312. The conversation is added to an available queue 2315 andprocessing ends 2317.

FIG. 24 is a flow diagram of a handler checking process of conversationconsolidation and management processing of the social customer caresystem 2400. Processing starts 2401. The system receives a post (alsoknown as a message) from a listener/harvester 2402 from a sourceinformation site. The source site and post with the handle (thirdparty's web name which is the third party's social-site profile) iscombined with the author handle to create a unique key (for exampleBobjones:twitter) 2402. The system performs a database lookup todetermine if the key already exists in the present system's database2403. If the key is found to already exist in the database 2402 then thehandle becomes marked as known and true 2405. If the key does not existin the present system's database 2404, then the handle is marked asunknown and false. Processing ends 2407.

FIG. 25 is a flow diagram of an open conversation check process of theconversation consolidation and management processing of the socialcustomer care system 2500. Processing starts 2501. For a given customer(search subject), some number of handles that may have been previouslyretrieved from social media sites are retrieved from a database 2502.For a search subject, if a handle for the search subject 2503 is found2504 then, an author identification for this handle is loaded 2505. Adatabase is checked to determine if conversations (interaction) existfor this handle 2506 and if they do, the conversation identification isreturned 2508 and processing ends 2509. If the author handle is notfound 2504 processing ends 2509.

FIG. 26 is a flow diagram of a handler process of conversationconsolidation and management processing of the social customer caresystem 2600. Processing starts 2601. A profile for the current searchsubject is retrieved from a source website 2602. A record of thisprofile is created in a data base 2603. A handle record is created andlinked to the search subject record for the person 2604. The new handleis returned to the overall process 2605 and processing ends 2606.

FIG. 27 is a flow diagram of known handler process of conversationconsolidation and management processing of the social customer caresystem 2700. Processing starts 2701. Any new interaction (conversation)with a customer (search subject) is added to the database and linkedwith that customer's identification 2702. Post details for theinteraction are added to the customer's identification 2703. Aconversation identification is returned to the overall process ofconversation consolidation and management 2704 and processing ends 2705.

FIG. 28 is a flow diagram of the response portal processing of thesocial customer care system 2800. Prior to the response portal webpageprocessing of the current system, it has been difficult for businessesto assess and track customer satisfaction measures, surveys, commentsand usage patterns for customers, across communication channels that areoutside of a company controlled infrastructure. So communications withcustomers prospects or other parties that are happening via Internetsocial networks and other electronic social interactions have not beenadequately tracked to provide important information, about individualsor in the aggregate, about customer satisfaction, responses toquestionnaires, comments and other usage patterns that can help abusiness gauge customer sentiment about a business and its products andservices. As used herein, customer may be an actual customer of thebusiness, a prospect or just a user.

Modern automatic call distribution systems provide customers with theopportunity to complete a questionnaire relating to a specificinteraction between the customer and a business. This could, forexample, be to report a good or bad service experience or additionalrelated issues at the end of each call. In contrast, when consumersreceive a support question response from a company via the web, there isno built-in, homogenous way for them to provide a “satisfaction rank” orotherwise report on or about the service they have received. Even worse,if they are especially unhappy, they may criticize the company in apublic forum. The present system provides a response portal webpage andassociated processing for quality measurement and to collect customerdata that may lead to improvements in business results or the serviceprocess itself, as well as to give the customer a managed and moderatedoutlet for expression.

Each time the present system sends a response to a customer, it includesa shortened url link (with embedded transaction identifier) pointingback to the response portal webpage where the customer can see moredetails about the answer, view knowledge-based articles, see relatedposts and responses, and get answers to basic questions about thesolution provided and other information or the customer servicerepresentative (“CSR”) that provided the information. As used here, theterm knowledge-based articles includes all forms of peer-to-peer andorganizational knowledge produced or aggregated and relating to thetopics or issues. Discussion items (parts of the conversation) thatoccurred via non-public channels (meaning private) are hidden on theresponse portal webpage until the person viewing the page authenticatestheir identity via credentials from the originating site or service.This preserves privacy while allowing the public content to be reused byothers to resolve similar issues.

The system accepts consumer feedback entered via the response portal anduses such feedback as a mechanism to automatically alter the value andrelevancy weight of specific knowledge-based articles. If severalconsumers indicate that a specific article or document is helpful inresolving a certain issue, then that article is ranked as such and willbe more likely to be presented to agents, experts or individualsreviewing a customer request, and thereby is more likely to be attachedat the top of subsequent responses for similar problems. Each time anissue resolution dialog goes back and forth between a consumer and aCSR, valuable corporate knowledge is created that could be reused forother customers with the same problem. The present system tags(categorizes) these conversation threads and stores them in a publicallyaccessible knowledge-based repository of documents so other consumerscan find and employ the solution to an issue they may have. CSRs mayalso access this knowledge-based repository of documents to solve aconsumer issue. The system also captures customer feedback such as aquality assessment on the support received. It tracks this and otherinformation collected across multiple social conduits/channels. Thisallows the system to automatically promote one solution over others as a“best-fit” for subsequent searches, improving the efficacy andacceptance by customers of solutions provided via social channels.

The present system using the response portal allows large documents (forexample that may exceed social media such as Twitter or Facebook messagesize limitations) to be viewed and downloaded. The present systemcreates a centralized public & agent-moderated knowledge-base of commonanswers and questions and other information, allows for promotional andcoupon delivery to aid in product and service upselling, provides fortracking to aggregate knowledge article and solution usage acrossmultiple social channels and provides for using “prompted” hashtags tosimulate survey completion as well as adjusting these survey resultsstatistically via clustering language patterns to compensate for“missing” hashtags. As used herein, hashtags means a word or phraseprefixed with the symbol #, thereby allowing any term to be searchablein a social media context. Hashtags can be useful because some consumerswill not visit or utilize the response portal webpage to comment on orprovide a rating for their recent service experience. To continue togather meaningful stats for continuous improvement, the present systemprovides a limited list of “prompted hash-tags” that allows consumers togive similar feedback using a social media system such as Twitter. Thehashtag list may be published on a social media site such as on aTwitter profile page for the company and may be included at the end ofsupport tweets. The present systems then culls all posts or statusupdates (also known as tweets) with the same included hashtags and usesthe consumer's author-handle as part of the identification unificationfunction to correlate the feedback to specific support tickets, as wellas track total performance metrics. A certain percent of consumers willignore the “prompted hash-tag” response option, but still provide usefulfeedback in the raw-text of subsequent tweets. The present inventionuses language clustering patterns to infer that the language detectedwithin such follow-up tweets, does in fact fall within the satisfactionrange found commonly in Tweets using “prompted-tag xyz” and usesstatistics to adjust aggregate metrics to compensate for the “missing”hashtag in the overall satisfaction scores. For example, a CSR sendsanswers to users A, B and C answers. User A follows the short-url to theresponse portal webpage, reads the response and completes a surveystating the CSR gave a good answer or otherwise rated the service asgood or better. This is one data point to assess the particular CSR'sperformance. User B does not go to the response portal webpage butinstead replies to the CSR's answer tweet and includes hashtag#acmesup+3 which is the most positive indicator (#acmesup+1=fair,#acmesup+2=good, 3=GREAT). Now there are two data points to assess theCSR's performance. User C doesn't do either of the above but insteadtweets that the CSR's service was great. The language clusteringfunction of the present system equates User C's tweet with the responsebeing great or good. Now there are three data points to assess CSRcompetence despite the fact that each data point was acquired through adifferent technique.

Turning now to FIG. 28, the response portal webpage processing starts2801. A CSR selects the next work item which is usually in the form of aquestion or request from the system available work queue 2802. The CSRenters a response to a consumer query 2801. The CSR selects thecommunication conduit or channel to be used for the communication whichis typically the same conduit or channel the consumer used and theuser-account that the CSR will use to send the response 2804 and sendsthe response 2805. The present social customer care system and theresponse portal application store the full response in a database aspart of the open and ongoing conversation with this consumer 2806. Adatabase function creates and returns a conversation identifier 2807.The response portal application used the conversation identifier togenerate a unique portal page identifier 2808. The application generatesa unique URL based on the portal page ID 2809. The system appends ashortened version of url in the response message going to customer 2810.If necessary due to length, sufficient characters are stripped fromresponse message to leave space for short url 2811. The system sends themessage or partial message (if conduit/channel limits require it) to theconsumer via a third party communication conduit/channel 2812.Proprietary messaging systems (for example, social media services suchas Twitter, Facebook, blogs, communities and the like) have unique andvaried restrictions on message and attachment characteristics. Forexample, at the present time Twitter restricts messages to 140characters and Facebook does not allow attachment of certain types ofexternal files.

To send a private message, Twitter also requires that the intendedrecipient be “following” the sender (meaning that the recipient haschosen the sender as a friend). These policies burden service andsupport organizations trying to deliver full and detailed resolutionsteps to their customers and get accurate feedback for issue closure.The present system automatically tracks the message delivery limits ofthe underlying delivery conduit, and attaches all undeliverable messageartifacts to the destination response portal webpage which may be thewebpage and website accessible by the short-url in included the consumerresponse.

The consumer clicks the short-url to access the response portal webpageand retrieve the entire message plus any additional payload or featurespresent on the response portal web page 2813. The consumer is alsoallowed to interact with other features of the response portal webpageincluding but not limited to searching the knowledge-bases foradditional information and coupons and upselling information 2814.

Turning now to FIG. 29, which shows a table showing customer optionswhile interacting with the response portal webpage of the socialcustomer care system 2900. The customer option 2091 may include, but isnot limited to, the following actions: seeing the entire conversationthread (excluding private messages) 2902; authenticating to the source(communication conduit) site, in order to see private messages 2903,answering a survey or other questionnaire 2904; claiming and consuming acoupon or special offer 2905; downloading and reading a knowledge-basedarticle or other attachment provided by the CSR 2906; responding back tothe CSR as the next step in the discussion 2907, searching the providedknowledge-base for other articles or related solutions 2908 orrequesting community (known as swarming) support in answering orweighing in with opinions or suggestions on the problem 2909.

Although the present invention has been described in detail withreference to certain preferred embodiments, it should be apparent thatmodifications and adaptations to those embodiments might occur topersons skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scopeof the present invention.

The invention claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method forautomatically assessing and tracking user satisfaction, comments andactivity patterns across Internet based social networks, the methodimplemented by computer-executable instructions being executed by acomputer processor comprising the steps of: inputting into memory a userquery, the query including a request from the user and a user Internetaccount; selecting a communication channel and the user Internet accountand sending a response to the user query; storing the response in adatabase accessible to the system and creating a conversation identifierthat identifies the user query; generating a portal webpage identifierfor a response portal webpage in response to the created conversationidentifier, and generating a uniform resource locator associated withthe response portal webpage identifier; communicating the uniformresource locator via the communication channel; displaying the responseportal webpage when the user accesses the uniform resource locator;tracking delivery limits of the communication channel and sendinginformation to the user regarding the response to the user query that isoutside the delivery limits of the communication channel to the responseportal webpage; allowing the user to provide survey answers to a surveywherein the survey contains questions about user satisfaction with theresponse; capturing survey answers from at least two sources: i) atleast one first answer that includes at least one hashtag from at leastone social media interaction, and ii) at least one second answer fromfollow-up social network responses as determined by utilizing a languageclustering pattern function to infer language detected within afollow-up answer that falls within a satisfaction range found in the atleast one first answer that include the at least one hashtag tocompensate for the at least one second answer being unassociated witheither the hashtag or the uniform resource locator; aggregating thecaptured survey answers from multiple communication channels andnormalizing the aggregated contents of the survey answers to rate theagent performance.
 2. The method of claim 1 wherein the survey answersare provided through the communication channel selected from the groupconsisting of: the response portal webpage, a hashtag response on anonline social networking service, a post on the online social networkingservice and a status update on the online social networking service. 3.The method of claim 1 further comprising correlating the conversationidentifiers with a single user.
 4. The method of claim 1 wherein thecommunication channel is a social networking service.
 5. The method ofclaim 1 further comprising allowing the user to search knowledge basesfrom the response portal webpage.
 6. The method of claim 1 furthercomprising allowing the user to download coupons from the responseportal webpage.
 7. The method of claim 1 further comprising allowing theuser to consume coupons through the response portal webpage.
 8. Themethod of claim 3 further comprising allowing the user to see an entireconversation thread for the user that is linked to the conversationidentifiers associated with the user.
 9. The method of claim 1 furthercomprising authenticating an identifier associated with the user andallowing the user to see private messages linked with the user.
 10. Themethod of claim 1 further comprising allowing the user to use theresponse portal webpage to select the communication channel preferred bythe user.
 11. The method of claim 1 further comprising allowing theresponse portal webpage to be crawled by Internet search engines toallow third parties with a problem related to a user problem to accessthe response portal webpage and to view responses to the user problems.12. The method of claim 1 further comprising allowing the user and thirdparties to use the response portal webpage as a self-help supportwebsite.
 13. The method of claim 1 further comprising: allowing the userto provide survey answers to the survey wherein the survey containsquestions about user satisfaction with knowledge based articlesaccessible through the response portal webpage; and using the surveyanswers to rate relevancy of the knowledge based articles.
 14. Themethod of claim 1 further comprising measuring customer loyalty usingthe survey answers.
 15. A computer system comprising: a processor; amemory coupled to the processor; a display device; wherein the memorystores a program that assesses and tracks user satisfaction, commentsand activity patterns across Internet based social networks, whenexecuted by the processor causes the processor to: input into memory auser query, the query including a request from a user and a userInternet account; select a communication channel and the user Internetaccount and sending a response to the user query; store the response ina database accessible to the system and creating a conversationidentifier that identifies the user query; generate a portal webpageidentifier for a response portal webpage in response to the createdconversation identifier, and generating a uniform resource locatorassociated with the response portal webpage identifier; communicate theuniform resource locator via the communication channel; and display theresponse portal webpage when the user accesses the uniform resourcelocator; allow the user to provide survey answers to a survey whereinthe survey contains questions about user satisfaction with the response;aggregate the survey answers from multiple communication channels andnormalize the aggregated contents of the survey answers to rate theagent performance; track the delivery limits of the communicationchannel and send information to the user regarding the response to theuser query that is outside the delivery limits of the communicationchannel to the response portal webpage; allow the user to provide surveyanswers to a survey wherein the survey contains questions about usersatisfaction with the response; capture survey answers from at least twosources: i) at least one first answer that includes at least one hashtagfrom at least one social media interaction, and ii) at least one secondanswer from follow-up social network responses as determined byutilizing a language clustering pattern function to infer languagedetected within a follow-up answer that falls within a satisfactionrange found in the at least one first answer that include the at leastone hashtag to compensate for the at least one second answer beingunassociated with either the hashtag or the uniform resource locator;and aggregate the captured survey answers from multiple communicationchannels and normalize the aggregated contents of the survey answers torate the agent performance.
 16. The method of claim 1 furthercomprising: iii) capturing survey answers from at least one third answerreceived from the uniform resource locator associated with the responseportal webpage identifier; and aggregating the at least one third answerwith the captured survey answers to rate the agent performance.
 17. Thesystem of claim 15 further comprising: iii) capture the survey answersfrom at least one third answer received from the uniform resourcelocator associated with the response portal webpage identifier; andaggregate the at least one third answer with the captured survey answersto rate the agent performance.